Chautauqua County Jail via Getty
Three days before Hadi Matar allegedly rushed the stage at a literary event to brutally attack British-Indian author Salman Rushdie, the 24-year-old wrote a late-night email to his New Jersey gym to cancel his membership.
“Hey this is Hadi,” Matar wrote in an Aug. 9 email to the State of Fitness Boxing Club at 1:31 a.m. “I was going tk [sic] ask if you guys can disable autopay for me right now. As I won’t be able to make it back to the gym right now. Thanks.”
The email, obtained by The Daily Beast, also showcased Matar’s avatar: the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the former supreme leader of Iran who issued a call to all Muslims—or a fatwa—to kill Rushdie over three decades ago.